We Go to Monte Carlo

French bandleader Ray Ventura was not only the leading jazzman in France from the 1930s through the 1950s. In collaboration with director Jean Boyer, he produced a series of movies in the 1950s that he appeared in with his band, all essentially playing comic versions of themselves. When the comedy We Will All Go to Paris (1950) proved a success, he followed up with We Go to Monte Carlo (1951), a silly little romp that sends Ventura's band to Monaco for an engagement where they get tangled up in a baby mix-up. The dizzy plot has a harried nanny, a private eye, a young heiress, and an American movie star and her agent all heading to Monte Carlo to find the sweet-natured infant, which has been adopted by the bachelor musicians of Ventura's orchestra. It's a dozen men and a baby, with plenty of breaks for musical numbers and novelty songs. Today, the film is remembered for the striking young British actress who was cast in the role of American movie star Melissa Farrell. Audrey Hepburn was a dancer and model just getting started on an acting career--she had appeared in small roles in a couple of British films--when she was cast as the tempestuous actress who storms off the set of a movie shoot to find her baby. It was not a significant role but it swept the young actress out of Britain to Monaco and clad her in outfits designed by Christian Dior, giving her a screen glamour she had not yet enjoyed. Ventura produced the film simultaneously in both French and English language versions. Once the English scene was in the can, the French cast was brought in and it was reshot in French. Hepburn's fluency with French allowed her to appear in both casts (Lester Fuller receives co-credit for the English version, which was retitled Monte Carlo Baby). The French version also stars Marcel Dalio (the decadent Marquis in The Rules of the Game (1939) and the worldly croupier in Casablanca, 1942) as her agent while the English language version features American musical comedy actor Jules Munshin (Take Me Out to the Ball Game and On the Town, both 1949) and, in her sole big screen role, Michele Farmer, the daughter of Gloria Swanson. While the film barely made a ripple in America, it nonetheless launched Hepburn's career thanks to a fortuitous meeting. While shooting on location in front of the sumptuous Hotel de Paris in Monte Carlo, Hepburn was spotted by the French author Colette. The 77-year-old literary legend was vacationing at the hotel while a stage version of her novel Gigi was being prepared in New York. Anita Loos was writing the play but Colette's contract gave her approval over the casting of Gigi and they had yet to find the right actress. "The moment I saw her I could not take my eyes away," she recalled in an article penned for The American Weekly. "'There,' I said to myself incredulously, 'is Gigi!'... That afternoon I offered her the part in the Broadway play." The rest is history: Hepburn garnered raves for her Broadway debut in what became a stage sensation and followed it with the starring role opposite Gregory Peck in Roman Holiday (1953), where her mix of innocence, poise, playfulness, confidence, and girlish beauty elevated her to movie stardom. Sources: Audrey Hepburn: An Elegant Spirit, Sean Hepburn Ferrer. Atria Books, 2003. Audrey Hepburn: A Biography, Warren G. Harris. Wheeler Publishing, 1994. Enchantment: The Life of Audrey Hepburn, Donald Spoto. Harmony Books, 2006. "Hepburn... and Hepburn," Colette. The American Weekly, March 23, 1952. IMDb By Sean Axmaker